What is this Press-Ganey business?

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Never heard of it until I started using this site. I've seen it referred to a bunch of times on here. My facility doesn't use this, so I have no clue. I googled it -- apparently it is some sort of QA/QI company that sends out surveys to patient post-discharge....and what exactly do the hospitals do with this information? From what I've seen on here, it makes nurses lives miserable.

So internal QA/QI departments aren't good enough anymore?

You seem very entitled.

Thank God the patients have the blessed luxury of being able to have a moment of your time.

You provide a service, they are purchasing a service. No different than the plumber or roofer or auto mechanic. If you hate dealing in customer service then move to a profession that does no require you to deal with people.

i usually find when a person feels the need to be insulting in an arguement/discussion, it is because they feel they are losing.......which in this case you should be......as erik has already elaborated on, Press Gainey can never be accurate, the potential for skewed results is just too high.

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Not entitled so much as wishing that admins would be on the nurses side instead of leaving notes in the bathroom stalls on everything we are doing wrong. It is nice to know that you are not viewed as disposable at your workplace when the department has worked our tails off to bring the score up from "good" to "very good." I don't mind working hard by any means but please let me know that this is the direction we are supposed to be going instead of leaving lovely notes of discouragement.

perhaps I do feel entitled that the staff should have more input than we currently do. I do not feel a single survey should dictate vast policy changes as it does at the hospital I work at.

Yes I could move hospitals but considering other circumstances it would not be favorable enough to outweigh my hope for the admins to care.

I am not sure what your administrators poor communication has to do with survey? As Nurses we bear the brunt of our patient's dissmay and have to feel the impact of the admin's decisions, good or bad.

When it comes down to it we are employees in a company and work voluntarily.

I love nursing, and I fine with providing excellent customer service but our hospital has all but forgotten the medical side of things. That we are still a hospital. There was an investigation about a pt. complaining he was delayed for his outpatient MRI. When he was told an emergency had come up, they were very sorry and would do there best to work him in now at the other facility or immediately after the emergency he told them this was unacceptable and filled out the survey with zeros. An emergency, multiple aplogies, offers to try to fix the problem and still not good enough reasons? Admins want to know why he was delayed and how we can fix it. When I look at it I don't see a giant customer service error like they do. I see people who are trying their very best to take care of patients and provide customer service. I just wish admins could see it is still medicine - emergencies come up and schedules change, as much as we wish we could control it we can't. I just wish admins would stop making heads roll for this one person being unhappy about being bumped by the ER. I wish they would remember medicine is still involved.

I think there needs to be a balance, something I think you are eluding to. Unfortunately for that balance to be maintained there usually needs to be two opposing forces. This is why there is usually a RN as the DON and a non medical Admin, one is supposed to fight for the Nurses and patients, the other the company.

Unfortunately that does not always reflect the reality.

I agree that medical emergencies take precedence but I only contend that customer service is in fact a large portion of what good Nursing was always ment to be...admittedly it needs to be only a portion, not the entire show.

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i usually find when a person feels the need to be insulting in an arguement/discussion, it is because they feel they are losing.......which in this case you should be......as erik has already elaborated on, Press Gainey can never be accurate, the potential for skewed results is just too high.

Did not realize I was in a contest, thank you for clarifying this.

I do not think anyone has ever made the argument that it was accurate. I would say however a third party tends to be more accurate than in-house quality surveys just because it eliminates, or limits bias. The other nice thing is Press-Gainy allows for a uniform measurement that can be compared to competitor hospitals, something an in-house survey cannot.

I would not say there is a potential for skewed, they are in fact skewed. Being in the hospital SUCKS, and even the best time in the hospital is still close to the worst time in a patient's life. The Press-Gainy surveys were never intended to be a scientific study, only a simple survey and means for measuring the basic foundation of measurement for the quality of customer service.

You do not have to score 100%, you only have to score better than your competitors...something admins forget sometimes.

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Specializes in M/S, Travel Nursing, Pulmonary.

I have to throw this out there too:

How would PG lovers feel if, five years from now, it came out that one of the top admin. from the company was accepting payouts to "adjust" the figures? Not that high paid execs EVER do this sort of thing :p but, ya know............who really is watching them?

Actually, in my mind, its not a question of "if"..............its a question of "when", as in when do they get caught. Lets start an over under for it here. Over or under five years before they are caught.

I pick over, cause so much money is tied up in it, they can fix it if anyone catches on.

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I have to throw this out there too:

How would PG lovers feel if, five years from now, it came out that one of the top admin. from the company was accepting payouts to "adjust" the figures? Not that high paid execs EVER do this sort of thing :p but, ya know............who really is watching them?

Actually, in my mind, its not a question of "if"..............its a question of "when", as in when do they get caught. Lets start an over under for it here. Over or under five years before they are caught.

I pick over, cause so much money is tied up in it, they can fix it if anyone catches on.

I don't know a single person who loves Press-Ganey...

It is understandable however.

If they were paying for the numbers then I would be ****** that they make us jump through hoops if they were just going to buy the numbers...hell I would contribute $100 of my check to not have to deal with surveys.

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Specializes in M/S, Travel Nursing, Pulmonary.
I don't know a single person who loves Press-Ganey...

It is understandable however.

If they were paying for the numbers then I would be ****** that they make us jump through hoops if they were just going to buy the numbers...hell I would contribute $100 of my check to not have to deal with surveys.

Don't tempt them, they will ask you for it:jester:

I wouldn't.

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Specializes in adult ICU.

I don't know if it really is understandable. Apparently 60% of the hospitals out there don't use it. I would venture a guess that they probably don't have patient satisfaction scores that are any worse or any better than the mean PG score. If PG could show me with objective data that their higher scoring hospitals had higher profit margins, attracted more patients, or had better outcomes, I could see the value of PG's numbers. It is my understanding, however, that they can't say that.

I am also not in the wagon with the people that think that we should be providing excellent "customer service" to our patients. Nurses are not waitresses, masseuses, or salespeople. Hospitals are not hotels. Hospitals and the healthcare industry/sector are there to fulfill a public need -- to heal the sick, and to maximize the health of the public as much as it collectively can. Should we be professional, knowledgable, polite, and efficient? Absolutely. Should nurses have to cater to every patient's whim in fear of bad PG scores? Absolutely not.

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Specializes in adult ICU.

The last 2 of those 4 articles are the same thing and it is a discussion of customer service in the healthcare industry. It doesn't make any claims about outcomes.

Only one of those 4 articles mentions anything about Press-Ganey (the second one), and it is a success story from ONE hospital.

The first of these articles states that customer satisfaction MAY increase customer loyalty/profit margins. It doesn't say that it does. It reads as a recommendation, not a program evaluation.

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I believe the customer service aspect is not necessarily focused upon outcomes, rather census...

Have anything that says customer service has little or no effect upon hospital census?

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Specializes in adult ICU.

I don't know why it would. I think Press Ganey makes a really big assumption in that they think that people are actually able to shop around for their health care. We live in a country where HMOs rule the roost. In heavily populated, urban areas, maybe you have 9 or 10 hospitals to choose from in your plan, but the reality is that you are probably going to choose your doctors, clinics, and hospitals from the ones that are closest to you, which have already been narrowed down from the ones your insurance covers. For me (Minneapolis/St. Paul), that leaves two viable choices when there are about 15 large community and/or teaching hospitals in the metro area. I have chosen for my care a 500+ bed academic medical center about 10 miles from my house (also connected to a pediatric hospital should my children need it) as opposed to the ~250 bed community hospital about 6 miles down the road. I chose between these two based on the breadth and level of services they offer, not on their customer satisfaction (I don't even know if they have scores, actually.) All the other hospitals my insurance covers are 15+ miles away. In some rural areas, you are lucky if you have one hospital to choose from within 50 miles. Those "customers" aren't going to drive another 30 miles down the road to get to the next best hospital because PG says they have better scores.

I live a mere 75 miles from the Mayo Health System -- hugely wonderful reputation in every way. Would I prefer to get my care there? Yes. Do I get my care there? No. Why? 1. I can't afford to take an entire day off whenever I want to see a doctor 2. I don't want to drive 90 minutes every time I need to see the doctor 3. It's impractical to drive 90 minutes if I need urgent care or emergency services 4. If I need to be hospitalized, I am 75 miles away from my entire family. If I wanted them nearby, they would have to take time off work and stay in a hotel, which is extremely expensive and 5. (probably the most important) -- my insurance doesn't cover them as in-network.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Academics.
I believe the customer service aspect is not necessarily focused upon outcomes, rather census...

Have anything that says customer service has little or no effect upon hospital census?

Let's go back and think about why people end up in the hospitals that they do. If you have a primary doctor--as many Medicare patients and privately-insured people do--they go to the hospital that their doctor has admitting privileges with.

If you correlate the consumer behavior in choosing a doctor to the consumer behavior in choosing a hospital, I would say absolutely NONE.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2508824

I would venture to say that most people choose doctors, rather than facilities, based on their insurance plan requirements. Take a look at the comments on this:

http://consumerist.com/2008/02/tell-us-how-do-you-choose-a-doctor.html

It is often driven by insurance plans, proximity to home, etc. What is the first thing an insurance plan asks you to do? CHOOSE A DOCTOR! That doctor can only treat you or send you to facilities in which he/she has admitting privileges.

You can yell all you want about "customer service" on the part of employees (nurses), but doctors are the ones who affect census. They bring in the patients. Do you really think that insured people would risk a huge out-of-pocket bill by going to a "better" hospital that is out of their plans?

That seems to be where all this survey stuff falls apart.

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